Beyond the Lab: A Scientist's Meditation on a Poem

 By Steven Wade Veatch

There are many ways to view and understand our world. Science provides theories, psychology probes human nature, philosophy ponders reality, religion shapes faith, and literature offers insight. Poetry, on the other hand, shines light into our lives, and reveals essential truths.

Poetry inspires me; it is one way I experience and know the world. Poetry’s charged words make the speeding bullet of my life slow down so that I can enjoy the best parts of living.

One of my favorite poems is the sonnet “Ozymandias” that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in 1818, when Egyptian archaeology was in its infancy. Ozymandias is the Greek name for Ramses II, arguably one of the greatest Egyptian Pharaohs. Ramses II erected magnificent statues of himself to ensure his immortality. The text of Shelly’s sonnet follows:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias King of Kings;

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias, the Greek name for the Pharaoh Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BC), was a sonnet written by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).
The Examiner of London first published it in 1818.
Image made through Bing AI Image Creator.

Shelley’s poem contains the message about the decay of empires over time. Ozymandias represents despotism and tyranny. The crumbling, ancient statue of Ozymandias underscores the fact that power and glory are brief—they do not last; even though the “shattered” face of Ozymandias, with his “sneer of cold command,” his “wrinkled lip,” and his “frown” survived through the millennia, the great Egyptian Pharaoh no longer commands anyone.

The poem is also about the fleeting nature of life, fame, and fortune. “Ozymandias” shows the ephemerality of our existence and what survives, what fades, and what vanishes.

Through the poem, I sense the endless desert. Where sand reaches in all directions around “that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.” Time has no bounds, every person is its subject. With Ozymandias, the passing of time took its toll on him and his kingdom, leaving a crumbling, lifeless statue drenched in silence, gripped by parching heat, and surrounded by somber swirling sands.

Everything is gone. Gone. The sculptor who made the statue is gone, Ozymandias is gone, and the traveler, seeing the ruins, is gone.

Shelley’s poem pushes me to consider what is left and what is not; what is important and what is not. The sobering thought of the fate we all share—death, decay, and ultimately ceasing to exist, looms large.

Like science, poetry delivers discovery and brings understanding. Poetry also crafts beauty despite the chaotic landscape on which life plays out.  And through “Ozymandias” I concede the time-bound nature of humanity—knowing that at one point I will disappear from the Earth and be forgotten—and that poem a stark reminder to live for what matters.

Poetry is a pause in my hurried and hectic life—an oasis to find some measure of truth in my journey, even if only for a brief time in the swirling, shifting sands of life.

Note: the author is an Earth scientist and was a volunteer ranger at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado for many years.